Burned area
satellite only20,407ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 20 Dec 2019 – 28 Dec 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
AU · Australia · –
Kangaroo Island fire, 20 December 2019 Kangaroo Island
Out · last detection 28 Dec 2019, 04:32 UTC
The fire started on 20 December 2019 in Kangaroo Island, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,407 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 12th largest in South Australia since 2016 (of 69 with a page). Number 84 in Australia in 2019, of 288.
Use this data
Compare with…
Suggestions: Kangaroo Island · 2026Kangaroo Island · 2019
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-26matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only9days
20 Dec 2019 to 28 Dec 2019: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 28 Dec 2019, 04:32 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only20 Dec 2019
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 20 Dec 2019
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only1,502
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 301 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 20 Dec 2019 – 28 Dec 2019
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only12,076MW
Total radiative power on 21 December 2019; hotspots that day: 574.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 21 Dec 2019
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model58.7FWI · extreme
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 18.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 20 Dec 2019, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model34.1°C · 25% RH
High of 34.1 °C and minimum humidity of 25% on 20 December 2019; gusts of 67 km/h on 20 December 2019.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 20 Dec 2019 – 28 Dec 2019
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 60people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 4.8 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2020).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
logLast day with fire: 27 December 2019 → 28 December 2019.
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
What was saved on 26 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 20,407 ha
- Dates
- 20 Dec 2019 – 28 Dec 2019
- Name
- Kangaroo Island
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/kangaroo-island-2019-12?v=2026-10-26A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire kangaroo-island-2019-12.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-12-20 | 665 | 4,884 | 34.1 | 15.5 | 25 | 32.4 | 66.6 | 0 | 58.7 | extremo | 1 |
| 2019-12-21 | 574 | 12,076 | 19 | 12.4 | 56 | 22.9 | 47.2 | 0 | 26.1 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-22 | 82 | 220 | 21.3 | 11.7 | 42 | 24.2 | 46.4 | 0 | 27.3 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-23 | 86 | 365 | 24.4 | 13.2 | 36 | 16.6 | 32.4 | 0 | 24.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-24 | 53 | 537 | 27.4 | 12.4 | 28 | 14 | 28.1 | 0 | 28.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-25 | 35 | 233 | 26 | 15.1 | 31 | 20.6 | 36.7 | 0 | 33.6 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-26 | 2 | 19 | 21.8 | 14.1 | 45 | 22.1 | 45 | 0 | 29.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-27 | 3 | 34 | 31.2 | 14.8 | 29 | 19.7 | 34.9 | 0 | 35 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-28 | 2 | 50 | 28.3 | 18 | 33 | 16.1 | 29.2 | 0 | 32.4 | alto | 1 |
| 2019-12-29 | 0 | 0 | 30.2 | 16.8 | 34 | 15.5 | 28.8 | 0 | 32.3 | alto | 0 |
| 2019-12-30 | 0 | 0 | 28.5 | 14.6 | 41 | 28.1 | 58.7 | 0 | 40.9 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2019-12-31 | 0 | 0 | 20 | 12.5 | 40 | 20.6 | 38.2 | 0 | 31.1 | alto | 0 |
| 2020-01-01 | 0 | 0 | 21.3 | 10 | 47 | 14.8 | 40.7 | 0 | 24.4 | alto | 0 |
| 2020-01-02 | 0 | 0 | 25.4 | 11 | 35 | 20.1 | 36 | 0 | 30.2 | alto | 0 |
| 2020-01-03 | 0 | 0 | 32.7 | 15.8 | 16 | 32.6 | 57.6 | 1.5 | 55.2 | extremo | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 20,407ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 20 Dec 2019 – 28 Dec 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 20 Dec
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 1,502
- in a single hotspot: 301 MW
- Danger at start
- 59
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.0GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
20 Dec28 Dec
28 Dec 2019
How it evolved, day by day
21 Dec
24 Dec
26 Dec
28 Dec
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
34°high
67km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity
It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 3 Jan.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Kangaroo Island where it started20,248 ha reached on 20 Dec4.6 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Built-up area4.8 ha
Residents≈ 60
Inside the perimeter there were about 4.8 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
Started with Strong wind: 44 % of the area in Australia
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Dec | 34.1 °C | 25 % | 67 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 21 Dec | 19.0 °C | 56 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 22 Dec | 21.3 °C | 42 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 23 Dec | 24.4 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 24 Dec | 27.4 °C | 28 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 25 Dec | 26.0 °C | 31 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 26 Dec | 21.8 °C | 45 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 27 Dec | 31.2 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 28 Dec | 28.3 °C | 33 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Dec after | 30.2 °C | 34 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 30 Dec after | 28.5 °C | 41 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 31 Dec after | 20.0 °C | 40 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 1 Jan after | 21.3 °C | 47 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 2 Jan after | 25.4 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 3 Jan after | 32.7 °C | 16 % | 58 km/h | 1.5 mm | Extreme 55 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 13 Dec 2019
After · 4 Jan 2020
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Detections table · 1,502Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV
Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kangaroo Island fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 December 2019 to 28 December 2019 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 December 2019 to 27 December 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,407 hectares (204.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kangaroo Island (20,248 ha, 4.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 000 · Emergency number and official warnings
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 27 December 2019 → 28 December 2019.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 December 2019 to 27 December 2019. 1,502 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.